PicoURL

A minimalist and fast URL shortener built with Go, Redis, and PostgreSQL. PicoURL focuses on speed, simplicity, and smart caching, providing instant redirects, rate-limited endpoints, and basic analytics.

Features

• Minimalist Design 🎨
  • Clean, lightweight UI with zero clutter.
• Instant Shortening ⚡️
  • Create short URLs in milliseconds using a compact Base62 ID generator.
• Smart Caching 🧠
  • Redis-powered caching for fast redirects and statistics.
  • Cache Stampede Protection using the singleflight pattern to prevent database overload under heavy load.
  • Includes negative caching to avoid lookups for non-existent links.
• QR Code Generation 📲
  • Instantly generate and display a QR code for any shortened URL.
• Automatic Database Maintenance 🧹
  • A background worker runs daily to automatically delete click data older than 7 days, keeping the database lean and performant.
• Accurate Statistics 📊
  • Referrer analytics for the last 7 days.
• Rate Limiting 🚦
  • Protects the API from abuse using a Redis-backed distributed rate limiter.

Screenshot

Technologies Used

Frontend:

• React: For building the user interface.
• Tailwind CSS: Utility-first styling for rapid development.
• TypeScript: Type safety and better developer experience.
• Chart.js + react-chartjs-2: For analytics visualization.
• Axios: HTTP requests.
• Nuqs: Lightweight in-url state management.

Backend:

• Go: High-performance API server.
• Gin: Minimalistic HTTP framework.
• pgx + sqlc: Safe, low-level PostgreSQL queries.
• PostgreSQL: Reliable, production-grade database.
• Redis: Caching & rate limiting.
• singleflight: Cache stampede protection.
• golang-migrate: Schema migrations.

DevOps & Testing:

• Docker & Docker Compose: Containerization and orchestration.
• Taskfile: Developer workflow automation.

Usage

1. Shorten a URL
   • Enter a long URL and get a short, compact link instantly.
2. Redirect
   • Visiting /abc123 immediately resolves to the original target URL. Popular links and statistics are cached in redis.
3. Get a QR Code
   • Instantly view and use the QR code for your new short URL.
4. View Statistics
   • View the number of clicks by referrers.
5. Rate Limiting
   • Every endpoint is automatically protected.

Running the Demo

To quickly get a demo of the application up and running, you can use the provided npm scripts.

Prerequisites:

• You must have Docker installed.

Commands:

• To start the demo environment:

  pnpm run demo:start

  This will build and start the necessary services in detached mode.

• To stop the demo environment:

  pnpm run demo:stop

  This will stop the running containers.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.